A Step Forward
by cellotlix
Summary: "Even before Shepard thunks down to my hole on Engineering, I know she's coming. She's only able to hold herself back for a few hours at best before she gets the itch to stick her crooked nose in my business. I think if I didn't like her so much, I'd hate her fucking guts." Jack and Shepard have a drink after Pragia.


**AN: Just a quick character sketch I wrote while trying to practice Jack's voice. She's got a very distinctive way of thinking/speaking, and I'm trying to capture that here. Not quite there but better than before, I think. Anyway, please feel free to leave me a review with your thoughts because I love hearing back from all of you! Thanks for reading, everyone. **

**CONTENT WARNING for mention of rape.  
**

Even before Shepard thunks down to my cave on Engineering, I know she's coming. She's only able to hold herself back for a few hours at best before she gets the itch to stick her crooked nose in my business.

It's all on the level, of course. With Shepard, all things are. Even when she's mad as hell, she doesn't have a mean or maliciously dishonest bone in her body. She's the kind of person who rolls with the punches and tolerates the abuse, and she doesn't ask questions when you tell her you need something.

I think if I didn't like her so much, I'd hate her fucking guts.

Anyway, she's only able to manage staying away for about six hours before she finally peeks in. Even after everything we've done – everything she's done for me – she's still walking eggshells. I guess I haven't really given her much of a choice otherwise, though I'm not sorry. It's good to be more than sure when you're dealing with weaknesses.

"Shepard," I say, nice and casual like. "Fancy seeing you down here."

"Hey Jack. I was hoping we'd see you around for dinner."

"Keep dreaming, Commander."

She grins a little, though her eyes are tight. "It's just Shepard, now," she reminds me, and I wonder if she misses the military. I can't imagine what would be worth missing in that spangled cage, but Shepard's pretty strange. She likes cartoons and bites her nails, for starters.

"Right. Tell me what you want so I can get back to my book."

She brightens a bit, even though I'm blowing her off. (See what I mean? Total fucking weirdo) "How are you liking them?"

Truthfully, I'm liking them a lot. Shepard found a pile of ancient 20th century literature and I've been steadily making my way through it during the off hours. Hated Steinbeck, loved the Vonnegut. But I don't tell her this, shrugging instead. "It passes the time, at least."

Even though I think she knows I'm lying, she doesn't push it. "I'm a bit jealous. Feels like I haven't had a chance to sit down and read a book in years."

"Whose fault is that?"

She doesn't even balk. "Oh, I know. I could leave it all behind, become a pirate like you said. Doesn't mean I can't whine on my own ship whenever I feel like it."

I make a mocking show of a salute. "Yes, ma'am."

"Yeah, yeah . . . hey, look. I've got some choice bourbon, and I heard that's your preferred poison. Care to join me?"

I'd usually refuse on principle but lately I've been struggling with the feeling that I owe Shepard, and I figure a drink is innocuous enough. "Why the fuck not."

Five minutes later we're sitting at the bar in the lounge, nursing our drinks. She's sipping the bourbon, and though she normally has a pretty good poker face I can tell she hates it. So this is a show of solidarity, then? I don't like knowing that her little displays of care and consideration affect me like they do; with a gut-twist that feels a little like guilt, a little like fear.

Before Shepard, a thought like this would have sent me scrambling for the nearest airlock. I'd made a decent enough business out of survival, and let me tell you that appreciating a good turn is probably the biggest waste of time I can think of, not to mention it makes things real easy for some jackass to turn that bit of kindness into a trick. But there aren't any tricks with Shepard. Don't ask me how I know it.

"How's the bourbon?" she asks.

"Pretty good," I allow, though in reality it's some of the best I've ever tasted. "Where'd you come by it?"

"You'll never believe me."

"Try me."

She rolls her eyes. "I found it on Illium. Why the hell would some artisan bourbon be on Illium, you ask? There was a volus who was obsessed with collecting vintages, the more expensive the better."

"Please tell me you stole it from him."

She shifts uncomfortably in her seat. "Well . . . not quite. It was a trade, more like. He had something I wanted, I had something he wanted."

Oh, I know this little act. She hates lying, so when she wants to keep something secret, she cuts up the truth in pieces and only gives you the parts she knows you'll like. It'd piss me off if Shepard was more of an asshole, but she really only ever does it in casual situations like this. "Which was?" I prompt.

More silence. "Lots of credits," she finally sighs. "Yes, I dropped a lot of money on this bottle, so I hope it's worth it."

"How much money?"

"Not important."

Knowing her, it was probably half of her personal funds, at the least. The realization that she went well out of her way to find a bottle of my favorite drink twists my gut up in knots. It's uncomfortable to look that kind of consideration in the face, especially if you know you aren't exactly worthy of it. "Right . . ." I say, at a loss.

"Look; I know how you get about these things, so I won't harp on it, but I just wanted to see how you were doing. Because . . . well, you know."

Yeah, I know. A few hours ago, I stood ankle deep on that fucking mudball, Pragia. A few hours ago, I walked through the halls I see in my nightmares (the biting metal around my wrists, the burn of the newest drug they pump through my veins). A few hours ago, I strapped a bomb to the desk I hid under as a girl, pressing my shaking fists against my eyes to keep the tears inside.

"I'm fine," I manage. It's not a complete lie, at least.

Shepard spins her glass between her hands so the drink swirls inside. "I know you are," she says. "I . . . don't get mad, okay?"

I scowl. "Why do you always do that?"

"You can't blame me for being cautious, Jack," she say, a little irritated. "A few months ago, you were threatening to beat the shit out of me for asking."

This is true. "Yeah, well. I'm hardly doing that now, am I?"

"No, I guess not."

"Right. So what were you going to say?"

She chews the inside of her cheek, like she does when she's nervous. "I don't know half of what you've been through, and I'm not expecting you to tell me, but . . . considering all that's been done to you, I think you did good today."

Sometimes I forget that Shepard doesn't already know the whole story. I've been a part of her crew for a while now, and I've become pretty used to the way she always seems to figure out the unsaid things, the secrets we all like to keep wedged in the soft places under our skin.

I clear my throat, because suddenly it feels too tight to speak through. "What do you mean?" I manage.

"I'm just saying that you surprised me, Jack. I didn't think you'd spare Aresh. But I'm glad that you did."

In the moment, I didn't know why I spared that little rat. He disgusted me, that's for sure. Nosing around ruins and trying to fashion a purpose out of the monstrous things that were done to us both. He made me sick to look at, but there was something else there too. I think I pitied him more than I hated him. I think for a moment I saw that we were similar, and the only differences came from our choices.

For once, I don't lie. "He was stuck," I explain. "He was living every shitty thing that happened to him, and it turned him into a sniveling pile of crap. I don't want that for myself."

"I doubt you could ever be a sniveling pile of crap, Jack," Shepard says.

"You know what I mean."

"Yeah, I think I do." Shepard takes another sip, wincing as she swallows.

"I mean that Aresh was dragging all that shit that happened to us around like some kind of gangrenous limb, you know? It's hard enough trying to survive without that kind of bullshit following you."

"True enough."

I pour myself another glass of bourbon. It's strong shit; already I can feel it flooding my senses, making me feel a little slow and warm. "Do you think he made it away from the blast?"

Shepard shrugs. "He might've. I wasn't really paying attention, but he could have taken one of the merc's shuttles."

I don't know how the thought of Aresh free in the galaxy makes me feel. On the one hand, I don't really give two shits about him. On the other, I don't like what he said about restarting Teltin. "You think he'll do what he said?"

"What? You mean rebuild Teltin?" Shepard sighs. "I doubt it, Jack. I doubt he'll be able to do anything with himself."

"So why bother sparing him, then?" I ask.

"Because it's his life, and he can do whatever he wants with it so long as he isn't hurting anyone. If he decides to wallow in his past, that's his choice. If he decides to leave it all behind, that's also his choice (and a better one, in my opinion)."

"I guess."

It's bothering me that I haven't really left everything behind like she thinks I have. Not yet, anyway. I do recognize it is a possibility now, at least. My rage has been a physical part of my body for so long, it's weird to think about it not being necessary. It's weird to think about living without my hurts slung up and over like some corrupted kind of armor.

After draining my glass, I laugh a bit. "It's a pile of shit, honestly."

"What is?"

"I haven't really left anything behind. Not yet, anyway."

Shepard doesn't scoff, like some part of me still expects. "But do you want to?" she asks me.

"I don't know yet."

"That's fair," she says quickly. Still treading eggshells, probably. "It's not like you have to change overnight. You don't have to change at all, if you don't want."

It's tempting. I'd be lying if I said it wasn't. It would be so easy to forget Shepard and everything I've learned from her. There's an old, echoing voice in the back of my thoughts that I used to listen to, when I got off of Pragia. It would say things like 'take what you can and run' or 'hurt first, before they hurt you'. I could listen to the voice when it tells me to kick Shepard's chest in, bomb the Illusive Man's accounts, steal the ship and kill anyone who gets in my way. I would have done exactly that the day they brought me in from _Purgatory_ with absolutely no regrets.

Except, now there's another little voice, and this voice is kind of a gigantic pussy. Actually, it's not so much a voice as it is an impulse or instinct. When I think about cutting and running, or screwing some moron, I get this feeling I assume is guilt. I don't get it, either. Though . . . it was easy never to feel guilty for screwing assholes when I believed everyone was an asshole.

Since I met Shepard, I know that isn't true anymore. So the whole house of cards came crumbling down. If not everyone is an asshole, then I'm not justified. And I know it's weird for that to be important, but it is.

She's still watching me, waiting for me to say something. I'm a bit drunk, so I say more than I mean to. "It's not that. I just . . . I don't know how to move on."

Shepard's quiet for a moment. Not treading eggshells, for once; she looks like she's reliving her own shitstorms. "It's probably the hardest thing to do. One of the hardest, anyway." She considers for a bit longer before taking a breath, maybe to steady herself. She knows I like to demand examples. "I know it's not the same, but in the battle for the Citadel, I told the fleets to save the Council, and we lost a lot of people trying to do that. You make these calls knowing that people will live or die based on what you say, but it's hard to let that go. It's hard when you realize most of the people on those ships had lives, people who loved them, plans for the future.

"And I know it's different because the things that haunt me are my choices, where you're haunted by what was done to you," she explains. "But still."

"Well, I don't know," I cut in. "I bet you could make the argument some of those things would have never happened to me if I lived a fine, upstanding life. I know of at least a few things I'd never had to have lived through."

I can see it on her face that she wants to know what I'm talking about but is too considerate to blatantly pry. "Even so," she says.

"You're not going to ask me which I'm talking about?"

"I figured you'd tell me if you wanted to."

And suddenly, I do. Part of me is so desperate for her to know my crimes and suffering that I feel breathless with the thrill of fear. I haven't confessed this to anyone and I thought I never would. It was easier to pretend it never happened if I buried the story deep down, deeper than the anger and shame. But this odd conversation has me flipping all the stones best left undisturbed, leaving no choice but to deal with the rot underneath.

"I don't know about the stuff that happened in Teltin, but I know if I hadn't done any of what I did after, I wouldn't have been infamous. If I wasn't infamous, I wouldn't have been brought into to _Purgatory. _And if I hadn't been brought in to _Purgatory, _I wouldn't have . . . well, I wouldn't have been around for those fucking shitheads to take advantage of, if you get my meaning."

And she does. I've never seen a person look as horrified as Shepard in this moment. She's already pretty pale, but right now she could give a corpse a run for its money, and her eyes are saucer-wide. "Jesus Christ," she breathes. "You mean . . .?"

"It's kind of funny," I say in a strange voice. My throat is almost too tight to speak right. "You'd think that growing up in a biotic death camp and seeing what I saw would numb me, right? I thought it did. I thought living through that made me immune to everything else the shitholes in this galaxy could throw at me.

"But it doesn't make one fucking lick of difference. When they corner you, you're scared. When they pin you, you're angry. When they – you feel it every time. You feel it more than you would have, even. Your whole body is an exposed nerve and nothing you do can make it stop or even make it hurt less. You just have to take it.

"I don't know. It's nice talking about leaving this shit behind, but when it comes down to it, I don't know how I would even begin to do that," I say finally. "I don't know that I want to."

We're both silent for a moment. I feel like it's too loud and too bright, like a layer has been scraped off my skin. I see her throat working as she struggles to speak. I feel guilty for even bringing this shit up, considering she obviously just wanted to share an expensive drink with me without the navel gazing. But before I can change the subject, she speaks. "I think you do."

"And you know this for sure, huh?"

"Of course not. It's just . . . if you really wanted to keep your old ways, would you have stuck around? Joined my crew? Taken orders from me?"

"I don't take orders," I say, narrowing my eyes. "I take suggestions."

At this point, she isn't even fazed when I get bitchy. "Well, the fact that you're willing to do that at least spells progress to me," she fires back without missing a beat.

"Right."

"But seriously, would you have done those things? Would we be sitting here and having a searching, thoughtful conversation if you didn't at least want to change?"

And damn it all if she doesn't have a point. "Well-adjusted people don't have a monopoly on thoughtful conversations," I argue half-heartedly.

"Don't they? Maybe I'm wrong," she allows. "But still. I think it bodes well."

"I guess."

She's looking at me with that searching look I hate, the one that makes me feel like she can see through my skin down to the wandering path of my veins, my bones, the way that makes it seem as if there are no secrets from Shepard. "Like I said, it's not like you have to figure yourself out immediately. You're young, still. If you start taking better care of yourself, you could probably live a long time."

"Thanks, Mom."

"Shut it. All I'll say is that I think it's a good idea to start putting the things that hurt you aside. You don't have to forget them because they're a part of you now. But there is a difference between letting those memories have their place and letting them define you, you know what I mean? I don't want to see that for you."

"Why?" I demand.

"Because I think you're better than that," she says simply.

I don't really know what to make of this, so instead I throw back the rest of my bourbon. Maybe it's the alcohol, but for some reason I really love that she thinks better of me than I really am. I want her to think that I'm capable of great things like strength and resilience; that I can carry on despite all that has happened. I want her to think them because if she does, there is a chance they might be true.

"All right," I say, clearing my throat. "Enough of this feely shit."

She doesn't press me. "All right, Jack. Just . . . you did good today."

"Yeah, yeah."

We go on drinking – well, I drink; she sips with badly concealed discomfort - and we don't talk about heavy things again. She tells bad jokes and I snark right back, round and round for many hours. I watch her gesture with so passion that she nearly falls off the barstool before bursting into stupid laughter, and I realize that I am friends with this woman.

It's a strange realization, and it hits like lightning. I don't think I've ever had a friend, so it's not like I'd really know for the sake of comparison. But there is something instinctual about it; I know this woman would do anything for me, and even more importantly I would do anything for her. She didn't run away when I tested her to the limits of what most people can stand, hurling vicious barbs at her that would have reduced a stoic to messy sobbing. She didn't feed me a lot of nice words without backing them up. She kept those words. She was true to them, and true to me.

I mean, it's not like I'm cured. This isn't a Grinch story, where the magic of Christmas and friendship or whatever inflates my shriveled lump of a heart into something serviceable. But it's enough to hear that this strange, tender woman sitting next to me thinks I can defeat my demons. It's enough to take this first, terrifying step and know that I'm not alone, not anymore.


End file.
